It can be used either way you choose.. legitimately.
No, you are taking a well-known construction in Hebrew (at least to those of us who know the language) used to intensify verbal action and trying to extract some clever "spiritual" insight from it... there is nothing legitimate about this kind of unrestrained hermeneutic, particularly when it violates the plain sense of the narrative, which is a reference to the man's physical death should he eat fruit from the tree of knowledge.
Did Adam drop dead when he ate?
With the exception of three ambiguous constructions in 2:20; 3:17 and 3:21, this individual is referred to throughout the garden narrative as "the man" (
האדם) rather than by the proper name "Adam" (
אדם). As to your question, no, the man did not "drop dead" the moment he bit into the fruit or even shortly thereafter. The Hebrew "on the day" (
ביום) need not be understood so rigidly, it can function as a compound preposition "when". The garden narrative (2:4b-3:24) stands in supplemental relationship to the creation account of 1:1-2:3 and in 2:4b there is reference to "on the day" that YHWH God made earth and heaven, yet this collective process was spread out over six days according to the earlier account. Returning to the other use of "to die you will die" (
מות תמות) in 1 Kgs 2:37, we can interrogate it similarly. Did Shimei "drop dead" the moment he crossed the Kidron Valley on his way out of Jerusalem? Of course not... he continues on his way, journeys all the way to Gath, retrieves his runaway slaves, returns to Jerusalem and is later summoned by Solomon and finally executed by Benaiah on the king's orders (2:39-46). When Shimei left Jerusalem, his death was certain and happened at an indeterminate point in the future. Similarly, when the man ate the fruit he was forbidden to consume, his death was certain and happened at an indeterminate point in the future.
Satan was just as confused...
Satan? There are four agents in the garden narrative: the deity, the man, the woman and the snake. There is no reference whatsoever to a
שטן in the text, the musings of later interpreters notwithstanding.
Kind regards,
Jonathan